◆ The Black Hallows (CVnU Location) ◆

▼ The Godless Plane ▼

Why it exists, none can say, yet the Black Hallows does - and always will. It is an eldritch world, completely independent from any other, and shrouded by murky unknowns beyond the borders of certainty and security. Here the limits of knowledge and trust are made to face the terror and otherness of basic helplessness writ large. It is an endless place as covered in mystery as it is filled with things the mortal mind can never endure. In the Black Hallows, impersonal forces roam the far corners of the land and make their home in the Void, a wound of non-existence found looming over a horizon too far to reach.

It's dreary sky hovers overhead with subtle echo of an unknown but coming inevitability. To enter the Black Hallows is to walk a fool's path. Still, many try. Be it an act of proving or a desperate search for power forbidden and twisted, it bears little impact on a simple truth. Those who cross the threshold into the unknown, rarely return, and those who do are forever tainted by what they see - and what sees them.

◭ Harrowed Tale - History of the Black Hallows ◮

◊◊ The Forgotten Age ◊◊

In the Black Hallows, no books bears the promises of gods in passages of deliverance. Divinity does not exist in this accursed realm, and if it ever did, it was claimed, twisted and perverted into something never meant for the eyes and ears. It is the one constant in a history latched to the whims of the Void that looms as a black tear in the sky above. In times distant and forgotten, the Black Hallows teemed with cities and structures other than the eldritch metropolis of Blackpool, the unbowed walls of Sunhelm, the decrepit townships of the Grim Pasture, and the enigmatic hallways of the Dire Halls. The cities stood cold and distant from the values man has come to regard as universal, and bathed in the lurid glow of a blood-red light that once hovered where the Void now sits. A sea of cathedrals and temples once stood in worship of the Void and sorcery in the vast expanse now known as the Grim Pasture.

Yet as the Void's gaze thickened over the Black Hallows, madness and despair seized the souls of its people and twisted the strange forms of its beasts. What was bizarre became hideous, nightmares were made physical, and baleful things came with a rolling mist so cold it hurt to breathe. Centuries swept by and the pale trees bled red sap, and the black seas pulled back like gums receding from teeth old and blunted. The Void echoed a secret, and when the people slumbered, they came to dread their own dreams - they could not shake the Void's word from their minds. In fear but with reason, the people stood armed but uneasy. The armies of Blackpool, Dreadville, Cindermere, Frostmire, Gloomhelm, and all others came together to wave their flaming swords and summon their powerful magic for war. But war never came. And as the days raced by and the soldiers surrendered to hunger, thirst, and exhaustion, all were sent home trailed by the specter of uncertainty.

In a month's time, something in the soldiers had changed. No longer were they plagued by worry. Instead, they were happy and wore smiles so wide it seemed to be all they could do. A person had visited them, yet none could remember their visitor's face, name or voice. They day past, and as the next one arrived, the people of Gloomhelm, Dreadville, and Frostmire were suddenly without soldiers. They were gone. Were to? None could say, only that a stranger had visited them and twisted their uneasiness into cheer. And as a mist rolled through with the echo of voices laughing and commenting on those foolish enough to listen, the Ashen Lord of Cindermere knew that just as with Gloomhelm, Dreadville, and Frostmire, a person would come for his soldiers. So the Ashen Lord stood with his flaming paladins, defiant till his last breath as he awaited the arrival of a nameless visitor.

From the shadows, the Ashen Lord saw hands pallid and clasped in a twitching embrace. Then, a smile and a face all too familiar - his brother's. But it could not be, as the year before, the Ashen Lord had put his brother to death for treason. Yet as his soldiers surrendered to a cheerfulness that the Ashen Lord himself thought strange, he soon felt an overpowering terror sit in the pit of his gut. This was not his brother, nor was it even a person. But something else. A Strix, Ezra the Madweaver. Come the following day, the soldiers of Cindermere had vanished, as did their Ashen Lord. All that remained was Blackpool and cities so small that historians never bothered learning their names.

Maddened men, nightmare creatures, and a miasma of dread rolled by Ezra's side, and while Blackpool and its allied cities made a valiant stand, their armies were laid to waste, and their walls and cities were overrun till only Blackpool stood above an ocean of dread and despair. Why it was spared? None can say. Only that the Last Stand ended in disaster.

◊◊ The Age of Strix ◊◊

Overlooked by the Void, the City of Blackpool survived for millennia smothered by the silence of everything that no longer was. Cities now in ruins, people now extinct, they all seemed so small before the slow march of the Void. With a sweet, wet voice it whispered an unsettling melody, one that Vha'shii - the Archduke of Blackpool - answered with defiance. With the power of his blighted sorcery, Vha'shii erected a maddening maze filled with dead ends for the mind, traps for the soul, and nightmare creatures for the flesh. It would be the gates his city would pray to for protection against the advance of the Void. Yet it was no army of ghouls or allies tainted and twisted by corruption that came - it was the second Strix, Marzanna, the Deathweaver. And death crawled at her feet. In her wake, corpses burst from the ground, and warriors and mages of legend walked free from the chains of mausoleums.

The torn lips of the dead twitched empty words, and the wet and hideous smell of rot sat thick in the air. And before the Maze of Vha'shii, Marzanna raised her hands to the Void and from its abyssal heart, summoned three beasts. The first? Saamas, a dragon of black and jagged scales made from chaos. The second? Anouk, an amorphous abomination wrapped in the flesh of those long dead. And the third? Sunilda, an enormous and malformed amalgamation of corpses. The maze stood no chance, and Blackpool fell to Marzanna's will. At her touch, weapons turned to dust, and Saamas roared a cry so powerful, it shattered the walls. Yet as Vha'shii and Marzanna met eyes, the Archduke begged mercy, but Marzanna had none. Though as all seemed hopeless, Vha'shii pleaded for compromise, and a deal was struck.

All that remains of Vha'shii's fate is the tome he left behind, a book bound in the flesh of ghouls, and a tale of the dreaded walk he made to the mists of Phantasmagoria, the third Strix if rumor is to be believed. The Archduke vanished, and a haunting peace lingered in the air for millennia, and legendary warriors and wizards from Blackpool sought to etch their name in glory by slaying the beasts Marzanna had unchained from the Void. Yet none succeeded, and the most famous of all - Razahn, the Dark Sun Sorcerer - faded to obscurity following his spectacular failure.

◊◊ The Present ◊◊

While warriors perished and returned to the weeds, mages and sorcerers found prosperity. Chapels and cathedrals built in reverence for magic grew in numbers, yet the most famous of all worshiped blasphemy; anti-magic. Built by Gethwine the Matriarch, the Hollow Chapel was a place where faith was placed in the null opposite of magic. Those without a sorcerer's skill and whose faith in magic went unrewarded, found their home in the Hollow Chapel.

And it was sacrilege.

Although Gethwine's teachings did not go uncontested, and her chapel and following grew. She forged artifacts and made relics bathed in anti-magic, and used them to ward off the fervent protests of those devout to magic both black and white. But as the protests escalated, and diplomacy collapsed and gave way to violence, those of the Hollow Chapel were faced with magic used for war and devastation. In desperation, Gethwine's prayers rose like a tide, and in her moment of trembling faith, Ezra came as an answer to her pleas. Mistaking him for a manifestation of anti-magic, Gethwine made her plea - that he lay waste to all temples and chapels. And so, the Mad Strix accepted, asking only that she give him her greatest relic as a show of faith. She gave him her ring, and Ezra did as he was asked, making ruins of all chapels and slaughtering all souls - beginning with Gethwine's.

And in the wake of the Mad Strix, nothing remained of the cathedrals and temples. Only a vast and accursed stretch - the Grim Pasture. All faith perished, and the sullen sky turned black. Purple lightning thundered across the cheerless skies, and a somber mist rolled through forests of black bark and metal ores made into prisons for the souls devoured by the Mad Strix. Burial chambers and mausoleums were built for those who had died, and as the centuries rushed by, the Grim Pasture became a mass graveyard where the lowest citizens of Blackpool were buried, and where criminals were thrown to ghouls, crones and nightmares that linger there. Man was never meant for the Black Hallows, yet in his stubbornness, man still came, collapsing the barriers between his world and the Black Hallows with inhuman rituals.

They had come in search of power and cosmic truths, but found non-existence and despair. No portal would open a way back to their world, and no gods would dare come save them. They were trapped yet made their resistance where the Black Hallows stretches into parts unseen. They erected their walls, built their stronghold and founded their city - Sunhelm. Yet every century, their city shrunk and their walls cracked. And in time, the Void and the Strix would come for them, and then their world.

◭ The Blighted Lands - The Realm ◮

In the Black Hallows, nothing is uniform. Its one constant is the Void, a black wound scarred into the bleak sky. Though once home to many an eldritch city, the Black Hallows has become a wasteland of anguish. Largely devoid of life as man knows it, it is a place where mages and arcane scholars go mad with hunger, horrors take forms between the dreaded valleys of comfort and security, malevolent souls wander aimlessly in search of skin to wear, and physical laws are more disturbing than they are natural. The mist rolls with a whisper that something in the land and sky is truly wrong, and an inescapable otherness lingers wherever the lands stretch. The known areas in the Black Hallows are five; the Grim Pasture, Blackpool, the Weeping Wastes, Phantasmagoria, Sunhelm, and the Grey Abyss.

◊◊ The Grim Pasture ◊◊

Once a vast stretch of temples and cathedrals where faith in magic shone bright, the Grim Pasture has since become an abyssal place shrouded in dark mist and flashes of purple lightning in a barren sky. Here, aged burial chambers, foul lakes, dilapidated townships, crumbling chapels and ancient mausoleums stand next to grey crags, black trees, and the jagged veins of souls condemned to be made into a foul and hideous energy. And in this murky and forgotten land, a purple mist sits ever-present, feeding on the positive emotions of those so forsaken to make the Grim Pasture their home. For the Grim Pasture is the domain of twisted things. Ghouls whose gaunt skeletal forms wear the lurid glow of haunting fire, and whose gluttony possesses them to feast on the happiness and cheerfulness of those drawn to their glow.

Yet they're but one of many horrors in the Grim Pasture.

Necromancers. Crones with a giant hand in place of their legs. Beastfolk, towering and horned who hunt the lone traveler who wanders too far into the black forests. Dreadmores, decrepit monstrosities of teeth, animal heads, eyes and bipedal legs. Elwynn the Barren Mother, an ancient giantess with a gaping maw where her face should be, and a skirt made of the tattered skin and bones of her children and those who venture into her dismal swamp. And all manner of twisted creatures and nightmares eager to feast on flesh as much as soul roam the land. Hope knows no home in the Grim Pasture. The air whips the flesh with brutal cold, and tears at the emotional selves of those who linger there for too long. It mangles the well of emotions, and drives wanderers into despair, shredding all positive emotions from the deepest parts of their being and leaving emotionally inert husks in their wake, catatonic and with little will to live.

Ghouls feast on the souls of the foolish, sucking their bodies dry and making spirit ores of brave adventurers. And those who escape the Grim Pasture with their lives are forever changed, to never again know happiness. Only emptiness and eternal dread, for the Grim Pasture is the hold of Ezra Strix.

◊◊ City of Blackpool ◊◊

Beyond it's shadowed walls, the landscape around Blackpool is a cratered mass of black rock and fissures breathing out a toxic steam. Boulders and large rock float above ground as though beckoned to rise to the Void overhead. To enter the City of Blackpool, one must solve the Maze of Vha'shii. Built by a legendary Archduke worshiped for saving the city from Marzanna Strix, the Maze of Vha'shii is a dreaded labyrinth of trapdoors, dead ends, and horror beasts enslaved to a magic that screams at them to butcher all who seek the gates of Blackpool. And beside them roam the Afflicted, criminals cursed by the sorcery of Dirqa Elidyr - current Archduchess of Blackpool - to carry a grotesque corruption that erodes the mind and steers the body as a vehicle for death and disease.

Emaciated and sunken, their bones push out against their skin like blades from within. Their eyes are abyssal things pushed back deep into their sockets. Their flesh carries the color of ash, and their jaws and teeth carry the strength of beasts. Their brutal screams ride the maze's corridors, and disease bleeds from their razor sharp fingernails. Theirs is a sickness that either turns or condemns. Some survive, themselves becoming Afflicted in service of Dirqa. Yet others are consumed by slow agony, their bones pushing out against their flesh till it breaks, their flesh wasting, organs turning into sacs of diseased pus, and the bones contorting and elongating till the the sickening snap of shattering joints drowns out the screams of the dying. Past the maze and gates, Blackpool is a strange metropolis of unsettling spires and pointed buildings whose draconic shadows loom over its people.

Above Blackpool, the Void hovers as the blood-red light of the Forgotten Age. Why? None can say, yet its glow remains in both day and night. Blackpool culture is renown for its art, and its reverence for Vha'shii. In a canvas, painters capture the basic helplessness of those who venture beyond Blackpool's walls, bards sing songs that invoke the overpowering emotions of fear, greed, rage and lust, and sculptors erect towering statues of Vha'shii in honor of the city's savior. Philosophers and arcane scholars often meet in Blackpool Square to test their wit and knowledge against one another in celebrated games of wit and intellect. Necromancy and elemental magic earns greater credence in Blackpool from arcane scholar and battlemage alike. The city itself is guarded by a legion of necromancers, battlemages, powerful knights and beast-masters in control of all manner of creature, like basilisks and winged monstrosities.

And at the helm of the city stands Dirqa the Archduchess, as much a cunning monarch as she is a powerful necromancer and blood mage. In her castle, Netherhall, Dirqa sits on a jagged and gruesome throne as ruler of Blackpool and Keeper of the Book of Vha'shii. Bound in the flesh of ghouls and ancient marauders who once sought to breach the city walls, the Book of Vha'shii is a legendary tome of knowledge and power. Those who flip through its pages are granted profound insight in both magic and reality. Arcane energies touch the minds and souls of readers, and grant them great powers molded to their desires. Those who value strength will gain unrivaled might, and those who covet sorcery are made into mages of unattainable reach. And yet, the Book of Vha'shii is dangerous. Those who read it are rewarded as much as they are cursed, bound forever to the City of Blackpool and forced to guard the book till their death - as Dirqa herself is fated to.

◊◊ The Weeping Wastes ◊◊

It came from nowhere, the deathly cold and cruel winds. Yet as they came, they made a frozen desert where all but one of the seas of the Black Hallows once flowed. Snowy highlands and mountains of ice stand under a sky as dark as the Void above it. In the Weeping Wastes, darkness never yields, and the cold never warms. There, fire dies before it can ever be born, and where frozen fog and mist do not roll, icy blizzards threaten to tear flesh from bone. Here, the souls of those who die of disease and battle are turned to cold rock and raised as amorphous structures of grey stone and deafening agony. To wanderers, an omnipresent current echoes the torment of the countless dead buried in the ice.

It is the hold of the Deathweaver, Marzanna Strix. Those who die of old age and causes deemed natural, go to nothingness and are spared eternal imprisonment to the Deathweaver's will. Yet those who are taken by disease, by sword and so on, are hers and imprisoned in a place where nothing grows and no one lives. Only the dead lay buried under the icy wasteland, with their souls in eternal slavery to the second Strix, as are all who die in Blackpool. For while the city worships Vha'shii, he had condemned his people to save his city. So that Blackpool stands, all who die within its walls pass on to Marzanna - to the Weeping Wastes. That was the deal made so long ago.

It is a lonely place where the cold makes a prisoner of the soul. For none who come may ever leave.

◊◊ Phantasmagoria ◊◊

A place drowned in unknowns, Phantasmagoria is understood by few. Said by Blackpool legend to be the third Strix, the formless one, Phantasmagoria is a maddening domain where nightmares come to life and reality shifts again and again, each form making less sense and inspiring greater unease. It is a hazy emerald land, blanketed by a thick mist that speaks to those who go there in search of the Dire Halls. It comments on people, mocks them, laughs at them, conspires against them, threatens to take their minds, wear their skin and replace them, yet it offers aid in one moment, then cruelty in the next. Immaterial creatures and foul monsters lurk within the mists of Phantasmagoria, preying on the belief and thoughts of those who wander aimlessly.

In Phantasmagoria, horrors take physical form by expression of a wanderer's thoughts. Those who dream of a departed love one will find themselves haunted by those they so long to see. Nightmares turn to reality, and an omnipresent uneasiness lingers in the air, threatening to doom the mind of the curious, act as benevolent guides to those lost, or torment travelers with a terror never meant for mortal minds. Those fortunate enough to navigate its mists and fight through the madness thrown their way, will come upon a place sought by every mage and arcane scholar in the Black Hallows.

♦ The Dire Halls ♦

It is a library where the hallways stretch to infinity. Knowledge - esoteric, secret, ancient, and arcane - lies behind towering gates that part for all who find it. Yet while unknowable truths are but a search away, so too are the harrowing things that guard them. Behind the gates of Phantasmagoria, pillars of books climb into its murky green skies as torn pages and accursed tomes of knowledge drift through the air with dust and years echoing in their wake. While the promise of power in Phantasmagoria is true, so too are the consequences for the zealous. The books, scrolls and tomes that litter its every hall all bear a simple truth; an equal chance of leaving the reader's mind and soul in ruin, or bestowing upon them cosmic truths and great power.

So memorable is an encounter with a book of horrors that few things will ever frighten one again. Here, the bravest of souls and strongest of wills are made to tremble before the quiet turn of a page. And yet, many still come in search of cosmic secrets and forbidden powers. And many - driven mad by an endless search for tomes always just a hallway away- never leave. Others however, perish. Monstrous trees with humanoid limbs and wailing faces where the leaves should be roam the hallways. Armed with scythes that wreak of powers disturbing and dark, they are Wailwoods, and they guard the Dire Hall's most precious tomes. And where Wailwoods don't walk, streams of corrosive liquids flow to dissolve all who step in them. Wailwoods skin wanderers alive and hang them above the corrosive streams in sacks made of their flayed flesh.

Rumor has it that the Dire Halls was once home to the Soul Lavaliere of cosmic legend.

◊◊ Sunhelm ◊◊

First founded as a settlement and safe haven for the first humans to venture into the Black Hallows, Sunhelm has since become a walled stronghold - a city- where helpless wanderers seek solace from the ravenous horrors of the land. Built on a towering arch on a lagoon that leads into the Grey Abyss, the one remaining sea in the Black Hallows, Sunhelm once consisted of a port, though every ship that dared sail into the mists of the Grey Abyss never made its journey back. Now, it is a walled stronghold gleaming with defensive magic. Stables of bestial mounts line the lands between the old ports and the road that stretches into the city center, and Sunhelm's outer gate is fortified with the Gold Tower as it's first line of defense.

Painted white despite its name, the Gold Tower is a watchtower where sentinels can observe the surrounding area, and battlemages can call upon the magic of chaos to hurl bolts of lightning, storms of ice, and gouts of flame at the dangers that make their march to Sunhelm's gates. Archers armed with magic bows and enchanted arrows line Sunhelm's walls, and barricades stand ready across the adjacent road to slow the advance of invading forces. Inside Sunhelm's walls, merchants run their businesses, inns stand in wait for weary travelers and humans in search of solace, and temples and academies for sorcery, esoteric arts and military training produce healers, battlemages and soldiers. Ruled by four sorcerers - Einar the End, Willem Osmaer, Judith the Pale Mistress, and Aedwen - they are known as the Circle of Magistrates, and promote a culture where one's position in Sunhelm's social ladder begins and ends with magical ability.

Research of the arcane and esoteric is prominent in daily life, and a yearly celebration of the Burning of Torphin, a Void priest, marks one of Sunhelm's unique traditions.

◊◊ The Grey Abyss ◊◊

Legend in Blackpool speaks of Phantasmagoria as the third Strix, but Sunhelm legend holds the same for the Grey Abyss. While hideous swamps and dark lakes are no strangers to the Black Hallows, the Grey Abyss is the one true sea that remains. Shrouded in eternal darkness, it is an ocean with the color of gravestones, and its stagnant waters flow with a starving hunger for living things. A dark and abhorrent power lies beneath a surface that flows eerily still, for it is the watery graveyard of the gods who once dared enter the Black Hallows. The Grey Abyss drowned them, and the twisted things beneath its surface corrupted their divinity into something hollow and sinister.

Those foolish enough to sail the Grey Abyss find a sea desperate for the flesh of those who fall overboard, and a darkness that veils the ruined hides of dead ships. Yet here, storms do not roll, and the waters are eternally calm. What then wrecked the ships, none can say. And what lies beyond the Grey Abyss or indeed if the sea itself has an end - may never be known.

Rules

1. Standard RPG rules apply e.g. no godmodding, no-selling etc.
2. This is a redone version of an existing location, and it is meant to be a difficult place to locate (as it's a different realm or plane of existence and all that), and a more difficult place to leave. Anyone can show up but sell the difficulty in finding it.
3. Sell the dangers and atmosphere of the Black Hallows as much as is reasonable for your character.
4. Do not control Dirqa the ruler of Blackpool, and Sunhelm's Circle of Magistrates.
5. You're free to create sub-locations here if you want, or create your own natives from the place. Just ask me first.
6. If you have any questions (or want to do something with an artifact or whatever), PM me on this account or on Grimmwald/King Leo/Thee Champion and all the other accounts if I'm on them at the time of your PM.
7. Have fun, or not. That's on you, not me.

I think I have an idea.

@shanana:

I love it, great job ^_^

@red_jay: Thanks!

Good job

I could do so much with this.

@_araneae_: We need to brainstorm.

@ozzy_manueldiaz: Thanks!

@ezra_strix: I'll get my umbrella.

There's so much potential! Can't even tell if I'm more interested in the "epic journey" from the outside or the character from within.

@arquitenens: Right? I have a few character ideas in mind as well. Looking forward to seeing what you come up with!

@ezra_strix: Do I still have certain special permissions?

@arquitenens: Always.

@aeron_glyndwr

Kieran - the Last Braveheart of the Wilshere Clan - came from the skies of his world and to soar in another's. Here, the crackling blue of his lightning wings was shrouded by the black of an everlasting darkness. Below him, the Grim Pasture met his arrival with a familiar sight; a silent fog seeping over a decrepit township. He landed, and felt the omnipresent dread rolling in the air. In the distance, he saw the haunting skeletal glow of ghouls desperate to feast on every positive emotion they came across. And as he felt as though he'd never feel cheerful again, like all those foolish enough to walk this part of the Black Hallows, Kieran turned round to catch sight of a man-shaped thing sitting against a gravestone.

It's skin was the color of burnt ash, and it's piano key teeth chattered from the cold. It pulled it's knees to it's chest with it's long boneless arms, and peered up at him with a blank stare from gaping holes of white where it's eyes should be. It smiled at him. "Hello", it's smiled widened, as though it were incapable of anything else. And perhaps it wasn't. Why else smile and echo a sweet, wet voice in a place so barren of joy? Because as much as it's shape resembled man's, it was anything but. Though what, Kieran couldn't say and didn't care to. He'd come to see Fraga, son of Ezra Strix. He turned away, and his muscled arms plucked the vibranium pollaxe from his back. The journey to the City of Blackpool would be dangerous, and he'd take no chances. Not here. Not in a place where even gods never strode.

And he couldn't fly, not with the Void staring down at him from above. It would suck him in, and corrupt him, hollow out his humanity. He could only walk, for he was not of this world.

"Hello"

That sweet wet voice echoed again. The chills ran down his spine, and Kieran's anger, his frustration - with Morgana, Travis, with everything - boiled over. Yet as he spun at the heel with a warrior's urgency, the Last Braveheart found that it was not him the man-shaped thing had spoken to. "Aeron!", Kieran smiled, his face brightening like a sun this world would never see. Slinging his pollaxe over his back and rushing to her side with a heart swarmed with a joy that drew lurid gazes from the ghouls stalking the land, Kieran pulled Aeron into his arms and surrendered to the moment. He cupped her cheeks and kissed her forehead, his smile never fading, "Blood hell woman, what in Lord's name are you doing here?".

The question lingered in the air, and as Kieran waited for an answer, so did Ezra Strix as he sat against a gravestone. Kieran's mother and father buried under him.

When are you gonna write a book?

@_dirge_: He will when you come back and write with us.

If only you knew how much you saying that means to me.

This is incredible. The lore is inspired. Whole lot of reading but its worth it.

@raysh_al_shaytan:

@ezra_strix:

The near-addictive adrenaline rush of flight dissipated before her feet had even touched the ground. Definite doom hung in the air of the Black Hallows like a sickly pallor, seeping into almost every inch of the realm.

It was borderline suicidal to come here. The Black Hallows was the place of myth, legend, and nightmares. Few dared to venture here, and even fewer returned after doing so. Even for Aeron, who had been here some time ago in fruitless search of Kieran, she had barely made it out. She wouldn’t have if it weren’t for the Sentinels of Sunhelm.

She’d spent her life steeped in the mystic, and as a Guardian, fighting infringing dangers into the mortal realm. And nothing had ever chilled her quite as deep to the bone as simply being in the Black Hallows.

Ghouls drifted in the distance and her heart sat heavy in her chest, as a wave of depression overcame her, trying to dig morose despair deep into her soul. She remembered this feeling. The Black Hallows tried to strip everything that made you a person out of you. All of your hopes, dreams, and love, leaving only worry, dread, despair, and worthlessness. All the worst parts of being human. Sunhelm was the only place the light touched, literally or otherwise, and sometimes her time there, although somewhat lengthy, felt like a dream.

But there were no Sentinels now, no help to be had. Only ghouls and despair.

A shiver went down her spine and the hairs on the back of her neck stood up. Goosebumps raised along her arms as she tried to follow Kieran, who was only a figure in the distance at this point. She knew that if he got too far out she would be lost, and used him as her lodestar, trudging through what felt like sludge.

She stopped dead in her tracks, with Kieran several dozen feet in front of her, his back turned and focus elsewhere. But it was what was behind him that made her entire body go cold.

Aeron wasn’t prone to fear. She lived for the adrenaline rush, the thrill of battle, and reveled in the bruises and soreness that followed. She didn’t stop dead in her tracks. Ever. She didn’t turn away from a fight, didn’t shirk her duties.

But when that creature looked at her, she swore it saw straight through to her soul, and tried to reach for it and pull it straight from her body. Every syllable was like nails on a chalkboard, even at the same time the saccharine sweet tone echoed in the stillness of the air.

The only thing that broke the reverie she could feel herself being pulled into was Kieran, as he abruptly turned around. His face brightened as he caught site of her, his smile spreading wide and even in the midst of this decrepit realm, she felt like she was home. Kieran’s smile shone through the gloom as if the sun had finally shown up here, warmth and a golden sunlight seeming to emanate from his presence, as it always did. Even in his darkest of days, Kieran Wilshere was the sunlight.

Her eyes closed, lashes brushing against her cheeks, as his lips brushed against her forehead, and his hulking musculature dwarfed her own solid physique. He was the only one who ever made her feel any sort of dainty.

Aeron lingered in his warmth for longer than she should have, breathing in the scent of him as she wrapped her arms around him and clung to him desperately, in need of a single moment of reprieve.

Finally, she pulled from his embrace, although he hadn’t yet removed his battle-roughened hands from her cheeks. She put her hands over his, smiling up at him with a hint of dimple in her cheek. “Didn’t I tell you I’d follow you into Hell,” she quipped cheekily. “I think this is as close as we get to it.

"It’s your move next, big man.” Dread dripped down her spine even as her palm itched for what would be useless against what they were about to encounter.

@aeron_glyndwr:

Overhead, dark clouds moved without sound, and the Mad Strix sat against a gravestone as barren as the face he - it - wore. It shivered, and as it's smile widened, something crackled in the dark. A furrow of subtle movement passed through the man-shaped thing. It was standing now. And it loomed taller than it had initially seemed. Taller than the Last Braveheart it smiled so sweetly to. Taller than the tree bent against the corpse of a house behind it. But shorter than the shadow standing next to the gravestone. It was a monster. The burrowing kind that crawled into the skin of another and made it's home in both spirit and flesh. So that it could feast from the inside of those who could not see it was there.

And as Kieran and Aeron shared a moment, the man-shaped thing stared, and it's smile vanished. It was as though they, these two who dared know joy and cheer in the Grim Pasture - had stolen something from it. From Ezra Strix, who had crawled into the skin of the man-shaped thing. So another emerged, from the shadows. Then another, this one from the cold bowels of this horrible place. Then another. And another. And behind them, the tall shadow of the Horned God stalked in silence.

"Hello"

The man-shaped things said. And Kieran answered, not with words, but thunder and lightning. With a mighty swing of his pollaxe, the air cried out, and a storm tore apart the man-shaped things. Only ash and the shadow of the Mad Strix stood. "Lord, we have to get out of here", Kieran scowled, cutting his and Aeron's sweet reunion short. He wrapped a muscle arm round her waist, pulled her close, and hurled his pollaxe, racing into the distance. "Coming here was a mistake. We need to find an exit portal before this bloody place gets us". Yet in the wake of the Last Braveheart, that which he'd turned to ash, rose again. They slugged through the barren ground, and fused themselves to a tree of black bark. The leaves rustled, the man-shaped things wailed, and the tree grew monstrous with jagged limbs made from the bones of the buried, an oversized stake in one hand, an iron hammer in the other, and rusted nails in the third.

The shadow of the Mad Strix whispered something in it's ear, and the monstrous tree turned away, wobbling in the direction of opposite to Kieran and Aeron, for it sought a different portal. One to the youngest of the Wilshere Clan, and her most faithful of bodyguards. It would find them, nail them to the wood, and drag them to the Black Hallows, to the Grim Pasture where ghouls would feed on their every positive emotional till they became husks once human, emotionally inert and with little will to live.

@ezra_strix:

A shiver went down her spine as multiple man-shaped things emerged from the shadows. Her palm itched for a weapon as Kieran was greeted with an eerie hello. His response was swift and brutal. Thunder and lightning scorched the air as he swung the pollaxe with a brutal swiftness that would make his ancestors proud. The ensuing storm tore apart the man-shaped things "limb" from "limb."

Ash drifted to the ground and Kieran quietly urged the necessity to get out of there. It felt like the walls were closing in around Aeron, suffocating her with grimness and a morose despair. It was the very fabric of the Black Hallows in all lands save for Sunhelm. Aeron's hand drifted through Kieran's as he slipped his arm from her waist, his fingertips drifting along her as he did so.

They raced along the barren landscape as a tree of nightmares took shape in front of them. It took a moment for her eyes to adjust and accurately decipher what they were seeing. It was nothing a human had seen before. It was bent and misshapen and where there should be wood there was bone, and the limbs were shaped nothing like branches, and when it moved instead of a whisper of leaves there was a creak of bones. And it wouldn't stop moving.

The Mad Strix whispered in the direction of the tree, and it turned, moving with steadfast purpose. Aeron shuddered to think at what that purpose could be. "We have to stop it," she said to Kieran, even as she began moving. The Apex Archer, as ever fleet of foot, began running in the direction of the limbering tree.... thing. In one swift motion she pulled the ever-present bow from her back and just as swiftly notched an arrow. The runes etched along her spine began burning, and the notched arrow glowed. Without thinking, she lined up her shot, using her preternatural ability to establish perfect aim, even while keeping a fluid posture, remaining on the move.

She notched one arrow and let it fly, and did the same three more times in quick succession. Each arrow was enchanted with magic she had learned during her time in Sunhelm, the magic some of the most potent that they taught. It had the ability to burn, anybody and anything, regardless of organic or magical origin, and it should be doing the same to the weird bone-limb thing right now, if her lucky stars were watching out for her. Without looking behind her to see if Kieran was following, she continued forward, intent to stop it at all costs.

@aeron_glyndwr:

Courage burned in Aeron's heart like a flame gone mad, and her arrows pierced through the cold air with a supernatural heat. The sound of crackling embers echoed in their wake, and they stabbed into the Mad Strix's monstrous tree with a heatwave's rage. A fire flared to life, and Ezra's creation, his abomination of trees and man-shaped things - burned to ashes in an instant. And the fire died soon after. Yet for the few seconds it burned, it cast it's light to places that had never known it, to the shadows and jagged trees of the Grim Pasture, and to the long paper thin hands and boneless faces that came apart like strings behind them. They were everywhere. And once the fire faded, the terrible chill returned.

Though as Kieran and Aeron fled to a place safer than this, Ezra turned away and his many-armed shadow stroked the graves of Kieran's parents, and drove their corpses to madness. They climbed out the grey soil with misshapen teeth, their eyes in harrowing clusters, and their faces elongated and crooked. They shared a body, and their scream was an unsettling and silent cry, a thing far too other to ever sound human. They could not walk, for their legs were broken and bent. So they crawled, across the cold dirt, over the ashes of Ezra's man-shaped things and monstrous tree, and into a portal that'd spit them into the attic of the Wilshere home. They would not survive. But they would crawl and scrape their nails across the floorboard, crying a twisted sound that was too quiet to be heard, yet loud enough to cast a vague and creeping impression of sound.

They would scrape and tap and scratch until found by Morgana and Trevor. And they would die at the feet of their daughter and her bodyguard as a message. That was Ezra was a kind monster.

That if Morgana so yearned to do something, he would grant her that wish. She'd be given the gift of burying her parents.

She deserved it.

@ezra_strix: Hey, nice job.

@mister_surreal: Thanks!

The Grim Pasture

The cold was ever-present in the Grim Pasture. It settled over the skin, seeped into the bone, and swarmed into the soul, turning the cheer and happiness of those who came there into depression and dread. For long and tired stretches, it was a forest of black trees where severed skin hung in place of leaves. Yet at times the barren trees gave way to the corpse of a decrepit township, to swamps roamed by Dreadmores and giants, and to wastelands of cathedrals and mausoleums long abandoned. Trekking through the woods, Razahn smelled of burnt air, and his armor seemed equal parts steel and volcanic rock. The Lost Dragonslayer walked in deathly silence, radiating great heat for every word muted by his vow of silence.

Instead, he concentrated, pouring every thought into scorching the air all about him. The great heat kept the Ghouls from stalking him, and the Beastfolk from hunting him. But for the giants and Dreadmores, should they come, he kept an armored grip on the hilt of his sword. Razahn's march was an accursed one, blackened by the wraiths that wailed nearby, and the purpose it held. He was bound in servitude. To his Mistress. A mad woman who weaved chaos and discord wherever she went. She was his only companion after being renounced by the Order of the Blackflame, and his hatred for her burned hotter than the fire at his command. And yet, he had need of her. For even she was better than nothing, least of all in the Black Hallows, home of the Void and the Strix. She yearned to escape the Black Hallows, and it was duty to find her the means to do so.

Slowing his walk, Razahn lifted his burning gaze to the wretched sky above. He saw the gaping maw of the Void, and his frustrations boiled over in a sigh. Legend has it that his Mistress was blessed - chosen - by the Void. And he felt the weight of her twisted gaze every time the Void stared him back. Cooling his heat and retiring to a log, Razahn sat and stared into the darkness with an armored fist on his chin. The wait would be long, but in time a tall crone who stored her wisdom in a necklace of severed heads would strode by, and the Lost Dragonslayer would return to his Mistress with the crone's wisdom, and with it, a means of escaping to the world beyond.

The True Heart of Darkness

"I know you do want to believe me, but I saved you" The Dark Angel could feel the eyes of her sister throughout the darkness tracing her frame as she moves back and forth.

"The school your adoptive parents put you in, it was a front for the machines. They wanted to take your powers for their own and then have you corrupt everyone in The Academy. I stopped you.

Purple lightening stretch across the Grim Pasture momentarily illuminating the desolate chapel, a flash potent enough to snag the attention of both Chaos and Mari.

There was an intense gaze shared, it was clear Mari's mental state was degraded by the thralls of the Hallows.

"Mari, this story has been told so many times. I am just the single link of a chain of memories from a universe that no longer exists. This is the first time that I've had a sister."

Mari finally looks up in the same instances another flash of purple lightning illuminates the opaque skies.

"Y-You're my sister?"

The Dark Angel simply nodded before rising again. "When mother was pregnant with us, I was to be the firstborn but she was so malnourished I never survived. My essence natural clung to you, I guess you could call it "Twin Magic" but it causes your natural power to dissipate. You see, I'm Darkness. And you were supposed to be light.

Chaos squats in front of Mari, clutching her sister's hands in the process. "Mari, I want to help you rid yourself of me, but to do that. You will need to find one with a pure heart."

"B-But you said...my powers are weakening"

"They are, but you weren't the only one born with a pure heart" Chaos rose once more walking over to where the passed out So-So was laying. For the first several days or so (Or however time works here) So-So stood tall in her protection of Mari, but eventually, the Hallows weakened the strongest warrior.

"If-I help you. Will you let her go?" Mari's starving body quivered, she too was starting to feel the anguish of being trapped for a prolonged period of time.

"I'm not the one keeping her here Mari. You are. If you want to send her home. Think about where you want her to be..."

"Daytonville...."

@shanana:

Lightning flashed, it's light lurid and haunting against the wretched eye of a barren sky. The air flowed cold past trees of black bark, and the long and thin faces of man-shaped things poked out the darkness behind them, grinning as though it were impossible for them to do otherwise. Their eyes - swirling pits of white - widened with glee, and their small mouths glistened with drool as the sound of feet dragging through ash and crunched bone hung thick. Elwynn the Barren Mother strode by. The giantess said nothing, for in place of her face there was a gaping maw.

Lightning flashed once more, but no thunder cracked overhead.

Men and women had been nailed to trees, their bare skin trembling in the cold air as Elwynn drew closer. The sight of her skirt - sewn from the tattered skin and bones of her children - left their hearts clamoring in their chest. Some shed tears, and others hung their heads in despair. They were arcane scholars in search of ancient knowledge and forgotten sorcery.

But Elwynn was in search of a new skirt.

She approached a man and gripped his chest. Her hands were small for a giantess, but her black fingernails dug into his flesh like razors. She twisted, then tore the skin from his bones. Blood leaked from his flayed skin, and he wailed till the pain tore his sanity asunder. But as Elwynn turned to another, a monstrous and many-faced shadow poked out the trees. Fear of something gripped her, and she fled. Yet out the shadows, walked a crone.

Her eyes were as white as snow, her lips as thin as paper, and her hair the color of ash. She was tall, her dress stained in blood, and a baby hanging out her torn womb. She was Ezra Strix, a cosmic horror, and a mockery of Catalina's miscarriage of Chaos. She sobbed her way to the chapel, inconsolable and twiddling her thumbs. She strode into the chapel, and the baby's empty gaze lifted to Mari and Chaos.

When it spoke, Catalina's voice echoed, "I love you. I love you both so much", growing more twisted and maddened with each word, "I would never let anyone hurt you. Ever... You're safe here, baby. So stay. Forever", a man's voice growled, the chapel backdropped with a tinge of red for but a moment, "But no.. no no... you must go. But promise to visit when you find the pure heart".

For if they did not, he would.

You twisted SOB

@the_championess: It can't be helped!

@catalina_liafador:

@ezra_strix: